Recently, with a rise in the standard of living, there have been increasing demands for diversified types of special-purpose refrigerators, for example, a kimchi refrigerator for the ripening of kimchi, a cosmetic cooler for storing cosmetics at a low temperature and so forth.
Though such various types of special-purpose refrigerators have been developed, developments have rarely been made upon a storage apparatus for an exclusive use in baby or child care.
If infant food or infant products such as powdered milk, breast milk, medicine and the like are stored in a conventional household refrigerator, they will be soaked with the odors of other foods stored in the refrigerator. As a result, the quality of the infant food or the infant products will be deteriorated and, even worse, hygienic problems may be resulted.
Therefore, there is a need to develop a multi-functional child care storage including a plurality of functional compartments for storing or treating infant food or infant products in various ways.
In order to meet the need, there has been suggested a multi-functional child care storage, for example, which is disclosed in a co-pending, commonly owned application, International Application No. PCT/KR2006/000575 filed on Feb. 21, 2006, entitled ‘MULTI-FUNCTIONAL CHILD CARE STORAGE’, which is hereby incorporated by reference. The multi-functional child care storage has a plurality of functional compartments. Among them, a steam sterilizing compartment accommodates infant products such as a baby bottle, a handkerchief, a gauze, a toy and so forth, and sterilizes these by hot steam.
FIG. 1 schematically shows the steam sterilizing compartment of the multi-functional child care storage. The steam sterilizing compartment 140 has a door 143 at its top by being closed and opened to define a sterilizing space 141, and a steam sterilizing unit 142 to disinfect the sterilizing space 141 by hot steam.
The steam sterilizing unit 142 is placed in the steam sterilizing compartment 140 such that it closely fits on the surface of walls 112. Moreover, the steam sterilizing unit 142 includes a rack holder 142d having a plurality of steam passage holes 142f thereon; an evaporation vessel 142a molded from stainless steel or the like, which is placed below the rack holder 142d and accommodates water therein; a heater 142b placed underneath the evaporation vessel 142a to uniformly heat the evaporation vessel 142a and vaporize water within the evaporation vessel 142a into the sterilizing space 141; a steam outlet 142c incorporated with the door 143 for discharging steam from the sterilizing space 141; a cover 142i mounted on the steam outlet 142c for preventing a user from injuries caused by releasing steam, and forcibly emitting hot steam toward the rear thereof; a rack 142e on which a plurality of upstanding supports 142g are mounted to receive the infant accessory thereon, further having steam passage holes 142j which are formed at its bottom.
Therefore, as described above, it is possible to sterilize the baby bottle 1 stored in the sterilizing space 141 by using hot steam generated by the steam sterilizing unit 142.
Meanwhile, in the steam sterilizing compartment 140, since the evaporation vessel 142a and the rack holder 142d become contaminated gradually in use, they are needed to be cleaned often.
However, there is a drawback that it is difficult to disassemble the evaporation vessel 142a from the steam sterilizing compartment 140.
Accordingly, it is preferable that the rack holder 142d and the evaporation vessel 142a are allowed to be easily released for cleaning and/or repair.